Free writing workshop for aspiring authors of young adult and middle grade fiction. The first five pages may be all that agents, editors, and readers read, so get them right with the help of three authors over the course of three weeks. During the third week, an agent will also critique your pages and your pitch and pick a workshop winner - the prize is a partial request!

Workshop Structure

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Thank You to the Participants and Mentors of our 1st 5 Pages May Workshop!

I am sad to say that our 1st 5 Pages May Workshop has come to an end. Congratulations to all of the participants who worked so hard! And a big thanks to our wonderful guest mentors, author Ann Jacobus and agent Sue Miller! They both provided such helpful critiques. If you haven’t checked out Ann's fabulous YA debut, ROMANCING THE DARK IN THE CITY OF LIGHT you should – I loved it!

And as always, thank you to our talented and fabulous permanent mentors, who read, comment, and cheer on our participants every month. Congratulations to our mentor Wendy Spinale, whose debut YA, EVERLAND, is now available from Scholastic. I adored this Peter Pan re-telling!

Our June workshop will open for entries on Saturday, June 4 at noon, EST. We'll take the first five Middle Grade or Young Adult entries that meet all guidelines and formatting requirements. (Double check the formatting - each month we have to disqualify entries because of formatting.) Click here to get the rules. I will post when it opens and closes on Adventures in YA Publishing and on twitter (@etcashman), with the hashtag #1st5pages. In addition to our permanent mentors, we have the very talented Nancy Holder, a NYT bestselling author, and a real sweetheart, as our author mentor, and Pete Knapp of New Leaf Literary as our agent mentor. So get those pages ready - we usually fill up in under a minute!

FREE FIRST FIVE PAGES WORKSHOP

Our September workshop will open for submissions on Saturday, September 2nd at noon, EST. Participants will be mentored by two published authors through three rounds of revisions and receive additional feedback from our literary agent mentor on their first five pages and their pitch. The agent mentor will offer additional feedback to the best of the five manuscripts in the workshop.